Combat Overhaul: Introducing Ara!
Fan feedback has always been vital to our development process, and when it came to redesigning combat for Early Access release it was no different (check out this whole discussion on our forums here: Explanation of how Casting Works
We took that feedback and made a lot of changes to combat in for Early Access Release, so let’s dive right in!
INTRODUCING ARA
As we were playing the game, we realized that the current STAMINA system was broken. Players were entering fights at varying levels of stamina which completely dictates the difficulty of the combat encounter. At 100%, fights were typically trivial. At 10%, they were downright impossible.
We needed a solution that balances the scales more for each encounter, while simultaneously allowing players to think strategically about how to fight the battle.
To solve this, we introduced a new resource that replaces STAMINA in combat — ARA.
ARA is a replenish-able resource that recovers each round. For example, players will begin a combat encounter with a pool of 12 with the ability to recover up to 8 per round. This means you can cast more ARA-expensive spells at the top of the encounter, and then have to manage your usage throughout each round, similar to ACTION POINTS.
Your max & recoverable ARA will be upgradeable over time.
While this system won’t be perfect in the beginning, it will also allows us to more finely tune combat correctly, including being able to better balance spells.
We will still reflect combat’s effect on player stamina — as you encounter and combat enemies, those encounters will cost you STAMINA (after combat is completed), but your overworld STAMINA won’t affect your ability to defend yourself in combat. When that gets depleted, combat begins to take a toll on your WELLBEING (which will be a very central mechanic further in development).
REVISIONS TO ACTION POINTS (AP)
In our playthroughs, we realized that our AP system was slightly broken. The idea was supposed to be that you could bank any unused action points to be used on your next turn.
In reality, you could pass your turn infinitely and (assuming you survive each round) bank those unused points until you AP bar was all the way off the screen. This was not only a broken system, but it also made balancing spells more difficult.
Our solution to this was to increase the AP pool from 6 to 8, and cap the bankable points to 12. This will again allow us to better balance spells and attacks, and give players another tactical choice to make during combat.
SPELL POWER
When a player casts a spell, they are given the option to adjust how powerfully to cast it. While we really like this mechanic, it wasn’t worth it and lead to little thought when it came to combat — just hit the monster with exactly the power needed to kill the enemy. And with the current spell stats, everything had the exact same power curve, making Magic Missile overpowered and the best attacking spell.
In order to fix this problem, we have overhauled this system. Initially players will only have one power option for casting spells, but later you can learn higher education from the conclave to upcast or downcast a spells. Each spell will also have it’s own base stats and power curve, giving them more unique identities along the power-to-cost curve.
We’ve focused on tuning 10 core spells and removed all others.
No more throwing spells at the wall and seeing what sticks! Spells will be added one at a time as we are able to test and balance them.
REVAMPED ARMOR SYSTEM
Let’s face it. All of our mages are weak, with low health, and armor essentially did nothing to help that. As combat existed in the pre-release, you basically needed to cast a shield spell in round one if you expected an attack to occur which made ambushes a total nightmare.
We changed that by developing a new armor system. We took a lot of inspiration from discussion on the Steam Forums and a bit from Divinity 2. Now armor is a temporary health bar on its own. With armor equipped, you now get actual protection and you won’t take health damage until your armor has been reduced to 0.
Players now have access to 2 different types of armor: magical and physical. All attacks will now fall into one of those categories and deplete the corresponding armor. Soon clothes can be enchanted with magical or physical armor and it always replenishes after a fight. Spell shields will now provide one or the other, or possibly both.
Speaking of ambushes, now instead of all of the monsters attacking immediately (and likely killing the player), the player can go first but with reduced AP. You can think of it similar to a reaction in TTRPGs, giving you a chance to quickly react and maybe put up a shield.
ENEMIES
Nothing is more boring and tedious than exploring a dungeon and getting into a fight in every room against a single bandit. Plus, the enemies in our game were quite brainless, yet another reason combat encounters became very mechanical and not as much fun as they could be. The primary reason for that — we told them to go easy on you and they’ve been holding back all of their signature moves!
Well that ends in the new Early Access release build. Enemy units now have passive abilities that help give each unit a more distinct feel, plus they each have more moves that can combo and trigger off one another. Once you are in combat, enemies should now dynamically introduce new problems for you as the fight progresses.
And speaking of armor, enemies also have access to the same new armor system as you, creating situations where your go-to spell combos might not be as effective as you had hoped. You’ll need to think on your feet a lot more and get more creative in your attacks.
We also reduced frequency of attacks, but with our new changes, those fights will be a lot more dangerous and the number of foes in each encounter will increase.
To add to these changes, we’ve also introduced flanking — this means enemies in the left and rightmost squares adjacent to the player will deal extra damage. We hope this will introduce mid-fight issues where even a basic wolf might become deadly if not carefully managed. This should also vastly improve the usefulness of move and obstacle creation spells.
CONCLUSION
This wraps up all of the major changes coming to our combat system in the Early Access release. We’ll be continuing to fine-tune these systems as we get more feedback and progress through our roadmap.
Let us know which of these new systems you are looking forward to trying out the most, or find the most interesting!
We took that feedback and made a lot of changes to combat in for Early Access Release, so let’s dive right in!
INTRODUCING ARA
As we were playing the game, we realized that the current STAMINA system was broken. Players were entering fights at varying levels of stamina which completely dictates the difficulty of the combat encounter. At 100%, fights were typically trivial. At 10%, they were downright impossible.
We needed a solution that balances the scales more for each encounter, while simultaneously allowing players to think strategically about how to fight the battle.
To solve this, we introduced a new resource that replaces STAMINA in combat — ARA.
ARA is a replenish-able resource that recovers each round. For example, players will begin a combat encounter with a pool of 12 with the ability to recover up to 8 per round. This means you can cast more ARA-expensive spells at the top of the encounter, and then have to manage your usage throughout each round, similar to ACTION POINTS.
Your max & recoverable ARA will be upgradeable over time.
While this system won’t be perfect in the beginning, it will also allows us to more finely tune combat correctly, including being able to better balance spells.
We will still reflect combat’s effect on player stamina — as you encounter and combat enemies, those encounters will cost you STAMINA (after combat is completed), but your overworld STAMINA won’t affect your ability to defend yourself in combat. When that gets depleted, combat begins to take a toll on your WELLBEING (which will be a very central mechanic further in development).
REVISIONS TO ACTION POINTS (AP)
In our playthroughs, we realized that our AP system was slightly broken. The idea was supposed to be that you could bank any unused action points to be used on your next turn.
In reality, you could pass your turn infinitely and (assuming you survive each round) bank those unused points until you AP bar was all the way off the screen. This was not only a broken system, but it also made balancing spells more difficult.
Our solution to this was to increase the AP pool from 6 to 8, and cap the bankable points to 12. This will again allow us to better balance spells and attacks, and give players another tactical choice to make during combat.
SPELL POWER
When a player casts a spell, they are given the option to adjust how powerfully to cast it. While we really like this mechanic, it wasn’t worth it and lead to little thought when it came to combat — just hit the monster with exactly the power needed to kill the enemy. And with the current spell stats, everything had the exact same power curve, making Magic Missile overpowered and the best attacking spell.
In order to fix this problem, we have overhauled this system. Initially players will only have one power option for casting spells, but later you can learn higher education from the conclave to upcast or downcast a spells. Each spell will also have it’s own base stats and power curve, giving them more unique identities along the power-to-cost curve.
We’ve focused on tuning 10 core spells and removed all others.
No more throwing spells at the wall and seeing what sticks! Spells will be added one at a time as we are able to test and balance them.
REVAMPED ARMOR SYSTEM
Let’s face it. All of our mages are weak, with low health, and armor essentially did nothing to help that. As combat existed in the pre-release, you basically needed to cast a shield spell in round one if you expected an attack to occur which made ambushes a total nightmare.
We changed that by developing a new armor system. We took a lot of inspiration from discussion on the Steam Forums and a bit from Divinity 2. Now armor is a temporary health bar on its own. With armor equipped, you now get actual protection and you won’t take health damage until your armor has been reduced to 0.
Players now have access to 2 different types of armor: magical and physical. All attacks will now fall into one of those categories and deplete the corresponding armor. Soon clothes can be enchanted with magical or physical armor and it always replenishes after a fight. Spell shields will now provide one or the other, or possibly both.
Speaking of ambushes, now instead of all of the monsters attacking immediately (and likely killing the player), the player can go first but with reduced AP. You can think of it similar to a reaction in TTRPGs, giving you a chance to quickly react and maybe put up a shield.
ENEMIES
Nothing is more boring and tedious than exploring a dungeon and getting into a fight in every room against a single bandit. Plus, the enemies in our game were quite brainless, yet another reason combat encounters became very mechanical and not as much fun as they could be. The primary reason for that — we told them to go easy on you and they’ve been holding back all of their signature moves!
Well that ends in the new Early Access release build. Enemy units now have passive abilities that help give each unit a more distinct feel, plus they each have more moves that can combo and trigger off one another. Once you are in combat, enemies should now dynamically introduce new problems for you as the fight progresses.
And speaking of armor, enemies also have access to the same new armor system as you, creating situations where your go-to spell combos might not be as effective as you had hoped. You’ll need to think on your feet a lot more and get more creative in your attacks.
We also reduced frequency of attacks, but with our new changes, those fights will be a lot more dangerous and the number of foes in each encounter will increase.
To add to these changes, we’ve also introduced flanking — this means enemies in the left and rightmost squares adjacent to the player will deal extra damage. We hope this will introduce mid-fight issues where even a basic wolf might become deadly if not carefully managed. This should also vastly improve the usefulness of move and obstacle creation spells.
CONCLUSION
This wraps up all of the major changes coming to our combat system in the Early Access release. We’ll be continuing to fine-tune these systems as we get more feedback and progress through our roadmap.
Let us know which of these new systems you are looking forward to trying out the most, or find the most interesting!